memory_alphafandomcom-20200223-history
Course: Oblivion (episode)
With a new warp drive installed that will allow Voyager to return home much more quickly and the marriage of Tom and B'Elanna, everything seems to be coming up roses. But, when B'Elanna and the rest of the engineering crew begin to get sick and die, the crew discovers they are not what they appear to be. Summary In ''Voyager'''s mess hall, B'Elanna Torres and Tom Paris are wed. Kathryn Janeway is the master of ceremonies and Chakotay is giving B'Elanna away. The Doctor takes holopictures of this occasion, and Seven of Nine catches the bouquet of flowers that Torres tosses over her shoulder. The rest of the crew happily toss rice over the couple to shower them with blessings as they depart from the mess hall. Underneath the place of celebration, however, the metallic structure of the decks begin to distort ominously and the thrown grains of rice begin seeping through to the Jefferies tube underneath. Sometime later, Janeway and Chakotay are busy deciding on whether to stop along the way of their 2-year journey back to the Alpha Quadrant to study an anomalous gradient in the curvature of space that their ship will pass by in 6 months. Meanwhile, Neelix is busy helping the newlywed Tom Paris decide on where he and his new wife would want to spend their honeymoon, with Neelix offering holoprograms of various places in the universe, such as a mountain resort on the fifth moon of Cytrax with its reputed "auditory aphrodisiac" cricket songs and the beaches of Ahmedeen with its seas of liquid argon. Tom Paris, on the other hand, is hoping for his honeymoon to be a little more "down to earth", as in being on Earth during the "Roaring 20s" in Chicago. As Torres prepares Seven of Nine to take care of Main Engineering while she is on her honeymoon, a strange reading is picked up in a Jefferies tube underneath engineering. A tricorder scan of that section reveals that it is losing molecular cohesion. The crew suspect that their new enhanced warp drive is causing subspace radiation that is somehow breaking down the molecular bonds in all surrounding sections. Even taking the warp core offline doesn't stop the problem. Janeway orders Torres to try isolating the cause of this problem and to stabilize the affected areas. Later on in her and Paris' quarters, after examining the warp field's schematics and finding no solution to the problem, Torres finds herself shivering, even though the room temperature hasn't changed, and goes to check herself in the bathroom mirror when she notices an erupting blotch on her face. By the time Paris arrives at their quarters for dinner, he finds that Torres has become violently ill and admits her to sickbay. The Doctor finds out that she is dying of acute cellular degradation, another effect of the radiation. The engineering crew is showing signs of this degradation, but The Doctor discovers that the rest of the crew is also affected, including the captain. Comforting his wife, Paris tells her about his plans for their honeymoon at the Graystone Hotel, but she dies moments later, despite all attempts of reviving her. After discovering that items brought on board in the past few months are not degrading with the rest of Voyager and her crew, Chakotay and Tuvok review past encounters with aliens, planets, etc. to see if there is anything that could be causing the degradation. They come upon the encounter of the biomimetic lifeforms created by the "silver blood" on the Demon Class planet in the Vaskan sector, which they naturally assumed they have left behind on the planet after their encounter with them. ( ) However, in a test where Torres' corpse is injected with a dichromate catalyst, the results show that she was a biomimetic copy. In fact, every member of the crew and Voyager itself are biomimetic copies whose memories have been copied from the originals -- part of why the crew doesn't remember being copies -- and the warp drive radiation, though harmless to humanoids, is killing them. Janeway decides that despite their perilous state, their goal is still to return to Earth instead of going back to the Demon planet, which Tuvok believes would stop the degradation. Some, especially Paris, disagree with keeping to the original Voyager's mission, but the crew follows their captain's orders to locate the closest Class Y planet from their current position to make repairs before resuming their course to the Alpha Quadrant. Environmental controls are adjusted to simulate a Class Y atmosphere. The Doctor, meanwhile, suggests to the mimetic Janeway to find the real Voyager so that the duplicate crew could copy the original crew's genetic patterns to prevent further degradation. A Class-Y planet is located, and upon arriving, Voyager commences landing procedures. A mining vessel, however, arrives and states that the planet resides under the Ord'mirit Mining Treaty and will destroy Voyager unless they leave. After Voyager's weapons prove ineffective, Tuvok suggests a way to destroy the mining vessel, but Janeway orders the landing canceled, reminding the crew they are still Starfleet officers, and has them send a distress signal on all bands in the hopes that the real Voyager will find them while also maintaining their course to the Alpha Quadrant. Chakotay feels that their journey has gone far enough and bravely confronts Janeway in her ready room to express his and the remaining crew's concerns of returning to their real home of the Demon planet. In the midst of the heated conversation, Chakotay is admitted to sickbay and dies moments later. Realizing her error in judgment, Janeway decides then to follow her first officer's advice and turns the ship around, bringing back online the hazardous new warp drive. Over time, many of the Voyager crew continue to die as the ship suffers further degradation. The Doctor is now permanently offline due to the holo emitters no longer working, and with Paris' condition not improving, Neelix is now chosen to be the new Chief Medical Officer. Seven of Nine's modified nanoprobes are keeping the warp field stable, hopefully long enough for the ship to reach the Demon planet. Janeway orders the creation of a time capsule out of non-biomimetic materials to preserve the memory of the duplicate Voyager crew and what they have discovered on their journey. Then suddenly the main deflector fails, and space dust begins to impact the hull. Harry Kim reinitializes the deflector in time to preserve the warp field, but as Neelix begins calls for celebration, the bridge crew discover that Janeway has died. Continuing on, Kim takes command of Voyager, assisted by Seven, with Neelix tending to the dying crew remaining. The degradation has become so severe that life support begins to fail with less than ten hours left of air. Kim orders the time capsule launched, but the degraded launcher fails, destroying the capsule and taking with it all record of the crew's adventures and existence. Suddenly, a vessel is detected; it is the real Voyager. Kim attempts to hail them, but communications are out. They must drop to impulse to contact them, but the warp drive does not respond to controls. Kim orders the core ejected, causing Voyager to spin out of control and tear itself apart. Meanwhile, the original Voyager has detected the distress signal and is proceeding to its location. Upon arrival, the crew finds only formless debris. With no traces upon which to make further investigations, Janeway makes a note of the encounter in the ship's log, and the crew continue on their way home. Log Entries *''Captain's log, stardate 52586.3. We've had a lot to celebrate lately - Tom and B'Elanna's wedding, Ensign Harper's new baby, and the continued health of our enhanced warp drive, which has taken us within striking distance of home. '' *''Computer, begin chief engineer's log, supplemental. I've spent the last four hours analyzing the warp field schematics. But I'm still no closer to finding out what's going wrong. '' *''Captain's log, supplemental. We've lost 63 crewmen and our systems are continuing to fail. Though we're still five weeks away from the demon planet, we haven't given up hope. '' * (Log entry made by Harry Kim) Acting Captain's log, stardate 52597.4. Our situation's getting worse every day. More than 80% of the ship is uninhabitable. Most of the crew are gone. It seems less and less likely that the few of us left will reach our destination. '' Memorable Quotes "''Given the volatile nature of their relationship, one might have predicted homicide rather than matrimony." "When it comes to affairs of the human heart, it is wise to look beyond logic." : - Seven of Nine and Tuvok, on Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres "B'Elanna has asked me to forgo the rigors of Klingon painstiks in favor of a more traditional ceremony." "They're saving the painstiks for the honeymoon.'" : - '''Captain Janeway' and Harry Kim "Congratulations." "For what?" "You may not want to know." : - The Doctor, Seven of Nine, and Tuvok, after Seven catches B'Elanna Torres' bouquet Background Information * How many, if any, of the episodes between and "Course: Oblivion" took place on the mimetic Voyager is unknown. While Tuvok and Chakotay were rehashing past events to determine the cause of their ship's degradation, the only event mentioned that was featured in an earlier episode was their visit to the Demon-class planet. Furthermore, no mention of an enhanced warp drive was ever made before "Course: Oblivion", and the mimetic Tom Paris still held the rank of lieutenant junior grade while the original Tom Paris (seen at the end of this episode) had been demoted to the rank of ensign in . * At some point between and this episode the mimetic beings were able to adapt to a different atmosphere than the one found on a Class Y planet. While in Demon they suffocated in a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, in this episode it is said that Neelix harvested vegetables on another planet. * Preparing to land Voyager, the mimetic Janeway orders red alert instead of the condition blue established in previous landings. * This episode is what is often called a "bottle show". * A microphone production error occurs in this episode. When the mimetic Tom Paris enters Sickbay to check on B'Elanna's condition, a production crew member's voice can be heard indistinctly in the backround, off-set. * A continuity error occurs when the mimetic Chakotay arrives in Janeway's quarters for their weekly dinner. She announces that they will be eating "chicken paprakash" (a favourite recipe of her grandmother). Janeway appears to have forgotten that Chakotay is a well-documented vegetarian (as per season 3's ). Given that they are both mimetic copies, it is reasonable to suggest that Chakotay's dietary choices would have been copied also. However, it is possible that Chaoktay's copy may have given up his dietary practices at some unseen point. Even more likely would be that the chicken was replicated which would remove any moral qualms Chakotay may otherwise have had about eating it. Indeed it has been suggested that vegetarianism has become the norm for humans or at least Starfleet personnel by the late 24th century. ( ) * This episode features the fourth time Voyager is completely destroyed. Course: Oblivion also includes the seventh of many times Janeway "dies" in the series. On this occasion, her bio-mimetic copy succumbs to the enhanced warp-drive radiation. * It is assume that when the Voyager was on the Demon Planet, the voyager vessel it self being replicated and so all the crew could aboard and had their own verses adventure. It is how we also wonder, how their destiny was. Then they were go explored and failed in the way and they just realized they were mimetic copies and also assumed living within mimetic atmosphere, and the real Voyager never knewn what happended with them because they have been destroyed on the way during the distress call. Video and DVD releases * UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video): Volume 5.9, . * As part of the VOY Season 5 DVD collection. Links and References Guest Stars * David Keith Anderson as Crew Member (uncredited) References aphrodisiac; Ahmedeen; antineutron; argon; Ashmore; biomimetic lifeform; biomolecular enhancer; bouquet; champagne; Chicago; chicken paprikash; class Y planet; comet; cortical stimulator; Cytrax; Cytraxian cricket; deuterium; deuterium manifold; dichromate; dilithium matrix; direct neural resequencing; enhanced warp drive; exhaust manifold; field medic; Graystone Hotel; Harper; Hazari ale; hydrogen sulfate; injector port; iso-synaptic pulse; isolitic converter; Kmada; launch sequencer; message buoy; micron; Milky Way Galaxy; mimetic lifeform; N'Kree; nanoprobe; Ord'mirit Mining Treaty; particle accelerator; Podaris sector; polaron; reaction chamber; rice; silicate; Silver Blood; subspace radiation; subspace transceiver; theta radiation; trilithium; [[USS Voyager (mimetic)|USS Voyager (mimetic)]]; Vaskan sector; warp core ejection system; warp field; wind surfing |next= }} Category:VOY episodes de:Endstation - Vergessenheit es:Course: Oblivion fr:Course: Oblivion nl:Course: Oblivion